On an average day on Spotify, megastars like Olivia Rodrigo and Drake routinely rack up the biggest stream counts. But in recent weeks, a new name has captured the attention of digital marketers who spend their days scrutinizing the streaming platform: Sleep Fruits Music. All of Sleep Fruits Music’s tracks …
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Earlier this year, when a person with the username “JeffBezosForeskin” paid around $40,000 for Monty Python actor John Cleese’s NFT — a crude iPad sketching of the Brooklyn Bridge complete with disproportionately sized, stick-figure fishies — I lost a bit of whatever faith I had left in humanity. At the …
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This story appears in Rolling Stone‘s 2021 Future of Music issue, a special project delving into the next era of the multibillion-dollar hitmaking business. Read the other stories here. TikTok, says Jason Derulo, has become “an extension of my life.” When doing anything he finds interesting, he instinctively gets out …
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This story appears in Rolling Stone‘s 2021 Future of Music issue, a special project delving into the next era of the multibillion-dollar hitmaking business. Read the other stories here. Fitness classes are the new music festivals. When Covid-19 trapped people at home for a year, the exercise-bike company Peloton thrived, …
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“YouTube [has] our music, whether we choose to license them or not… They say they bring users into the licensed ecosystem, but at such a paltry return that they might as well be in the pirate world.” So spoke Martin Mills, co-founder and Chairman of Beggars Group — home to …
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A wild thing happened on Monday, March 1st. The share price of Live Nation Entertainment hit an all-time high — even though the last time the concert company had hosted a full-scale live show was 12 months prior. That stock-price peak sent the market cap of the Los Angeles-headquartered Live …
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In Rolling Stone‘s series At Work, we go behind the curtain with decision-makers across the fast-changing music business — exploring a range of responsibilities, burgeoning ideas, advice for industry newcomers, and more. Read earlier interviews here. In times of great disruption in an industry, Neil Jacobson says, one needs to …
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What’s the fastest-growing profit center in the record business? For years, there’s been one easy answer: streaming. Yet that’s not the case anymore, according to someone in the know — Steve Cooper, the CEO of Warner Music Group. Warner generated over $3.8 billion in recorded music revenues in the last …
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Ashley Calhoun, Pulse Music Group’s new head of creative, preaches the power of patience. Calhoun knows a lot about long plays. She signed beloved R&B artist Kehlani to the publishing and label group in February, after five years of conversation. “There were just a lot of things, deal-wise, that needed …
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Like most humans, Michael Powell, program director for the Washington D.C. rap radio station WKYS, has been spending extra time on Instagram while locked down at home. “There’s nothing else to do in quarantine,” he says. “That’s become my pastime.” Roughly three weeks ago, Powell came across a new trend: …
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